Atlanta Ballet explores complicated legacy of Coco Chanel with new production

“Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon” is making its North American premiere with the Atlanta Ballet, exploring the life and fraught legacy of the legendary fashion designer. 

The ballet comes from choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and is her tenth full-length narrative piece. In her previous work, Ochoa has choreographed pieces about the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and the former First Lady of Argentina Eva Perón, taking an active interest in the lives of historical women. 

“I feel that by giving a platform to those women, who were real, we learn a little bit about the development of the woman in history and the hardships they had to go through to gain their independence,” Ochoa said. 

In the fashion world, Chanel is synonymous with liberation in many ways. She popularized a casual, yet luxurious look, and the silhouette she would become known for replaced the more restricted, coresetted style that had been popular in the past. But in recent years, Chanel’s life outside of fashion has come under scrutiny. In particular, Chanel’s antisemitism and her collaboration with Nazis during World War II has cast a dark cloud over the designer’s legacy. 

“She did liberate us, and for that we can be grateful for the vision that she had for us,” Ochoa said about Chanel’s work in fashion. “I’m really thankful that she did that … but how she got there, not so nice.”

Chanel was criticized for her relationship with Nazis in France during the war, particularly for a romantic relationship she had with a German officer named Hans Günther von Dincklage. After Paris was liberated from the Germans, Chanel was questioned about her relationship with Dincklage, and eventually released. But In 2011, the journalist Hal Vaughan published “Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War,” a biography based on declassified documents that alleged Chanel had collaborated with Nazis during World War II, including evidence that she was a Nazi agent with a spy number. 

In conjunction with this production, the Atlanta Ballet is partnering with the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film, as well as The Breman Museum to provide additional programming about not only Chanel’s impact on the fashion world, but her antisemitic past as well. 

“The ballet portrays a historical figure with a past that was both inspiring and problematic, so we want to go beyond the stage with meaningful partnerships and educational resources to help contextualize Chanel’s story,” said Atlanta Ballet Artistic Director Gennadi Nedvigin in a press release. 

The Breman plans to produce a video to be aired on YouTube in early February, which will feature a conversation about Chanel’s complicated legacy with Nedvigin, Ochoa, and The Breman’s Rabbi Joseph Prass.  

Caption

Atlanta Ballet dancers Mikaela Santos as Coco and Fuki Takahashi as Shadow (Photo by Shoccara Marcus). Atlanta Ballet dancers Mikaela Santos as Coco and Fuki Takahashi as Shadow.

Credit: Shoccara Marcus

Chanel was born into poverty as Gabrielle Chanel in 1883. When her mother died, her father sent her and her sisters to live in a convent. According to Ochoa, he left with the promise that he would come back. He never did, prompting a distrust of men and a sense of loss that Chanel perhaps never moved past. 

Rafael Gomes, SCAD’s director of fashion exhibitions, said Chanel’s tough childhood translated into toughness as an adult. 

“She was a woman looking to escape her disadvantaged background and replace it with a world of luxury, though on her terms,” Gomes said in an emailed statement. “It was not enough to become an interloper in luxury; instead, she remade that world in her image.”

Eventually, Chanel climbed her way to the top, ingratiating herself with important, wealthy men to get where she wanted to be. 

“She seduced a lot of men, and I think it’s because she wanted to be seen by men,” Ochoa said. “But at the same time, she didn’t want to be owned. She wanted to prove to the world – I can make it without your money.”

Many of Chanel’s different relationships with men are covered in the ballet, including her partnership with Pierre Wertheimer, the French businessman who helped co-found Chanel. The Werheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul, made an agreement with Chanel that gave them 70% of the profits of Chanel No. 5. Over the years, Chanel grew unhappy with the agreement. 

Ochoa said she thinks part of Chanel’s antisemitism might have stemmed from her business dealings with the Wertheimers, who were Jewish. During World War II, Chanel petitioned German officials to give her sole ownership of the company. 

“She felt that [Pierre] cheated her, and that made her really angry,” Ochoa said. “So she used everything in her power and her relationships to get back at him.”

At that time in France and throughout Europe, however, Chanel would have been surrounded by antisemitic thought, said Prass, and there is evidence that Chanel held antisemitic beliefs before her dealings with the Wertheimers. 

“Coco Chanel grew up in an antisemitic world where this was completely acceptable,” Prass said. “That doesn’t give anyone an excuse to exhibit antisemitism, because it was culturally acceptable. There’s plenty of other people who, during World War II and the Holocaust, were rescuers or resisters, who chose to be on the side of good and right, and not the Nazis and evil.”

In choreographing the ballet, Ochoa found physical ways to show Chanel’s opportunism, as well as ways to capture both her tough and seductive qualities. The show will feature the concept of a “Shadow Chanel” – a contemporary version of the designer who follows her past self around, pushing her to choose money over ethics. 

“I need to show that she’s very exigent with people she’s working around,” Ochoa said. “She’s very seductive, but at the same time aloof. And she has a weapon – she’s always smoking.” 

“Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon” is a co-production of Hong Kong Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Queensland Ballet. According to a press release, Hong Kong Ballet premiered the ballet in March and after the Atlanta premiere, the Queensland Ballet will present the production in the fall of 2024.

The production runs from Feb. 9-17. Tickets can be purchased online.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Rough Draft Atlanta.